


A Few Good Men

by Pixelfun20



Series: Captainball! [7]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Awesome Clint Barton, Awesome Sharon Carter (Marvel), BAMF Steve Rogers, Birth Swap, Canon Divergence - Avengers (2012), Canon Divergence - Captain America: The First Avenger, Child Abuse, Clint Barton and the 21st Century, Clint Barton as Captain America, Clint Barton-centric, Clint takes no one's shit, Deaf Clint Barton, Gen, Natasha Romanov Is a Good Bro, Past Abuse, Pre-Serum Steve Rogers, Steve Rogers Needs a Hug, Steve Rogers-centric, World War II, no beta we die like men
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-03-28
Updated: 2020-03-31
Packaged: 2021-02-28 20:14:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,749
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23363044
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pixelfun20/pseuds/Pixelfun20
Summary: Clinton Francis Barton is born to Sarah Barton on June 18, 1918, and grows up with blood on his knuckles.Steven Grant Rogers is born on July 4, 1982, to Edith and Harold Rogers, with one eye open.----Or, Steve and Clint's births are swapped. Some things change, and some things stay the same.
Relationships: Avengers Team - Relationship, Barney Barton & Steve Rogers, Clint Barton & Howard Stark, Clint Barton & Peggy Carter, Clint Barton & Steve Rogers, Clint Barton & Tony Stark, James "Bucky" Barnes & Clint Barton, Laura Barton & Steve Rogers, Steve Rogers & Natasha Romanov
Series: Captainball! [7]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1443709
Comments: 8
Kudos: 36





	1. Blood on His Knuckles

**Author's Note:**

> Big thanks to @dirgewithoutmusic, whose series "Boy with a scar" inspired this. I got to try a new writing style, and it was a lot of fun! Her stories are a must-read for the Harry Potter Fandom.

Clinton Francis Barton is born to Sarah Barton on June 18, 1918, and grows up with blood on his knuckles.

The blood seems to be permanently stained there, no matter how many years pass and no matter how much Sarah scolds him or the other kids laugh or the looks he gets from the grown-ups. Even born almost 70 years early, Clint has a good, stubborn head on his shoulders, and takes shit from exactly no one.

He meets James Buchanan Barnes at seven, when he gets saved from a beating by the neighborhood bullies. They fight together, back to back, and when they've successfully hopped the fence and ran two blocks away, Bucky wipes the blood off his upper lip, grins and sticks out a hand. Clint looks at him for a moment, hesitant to shake because of the blood staining his knuckles. Bucky notices, laughs, and says he's now Clint's best friend because of them.

The Great Depression hits everyone hard, and the Bartons are one of them. Clint is eleven when he and Bucky steal a newspaper only to see the headlines covering half the page. Clint is lucky, though. He may be dirt poor, but Sarah works at hospital and does well enough that she doesn't lose her job like many of her peers. Bucky isn't.

So Clint continues to paint the blood on his knuckles, but for a new reason. He's older now, and has learned to accept the fact that he'll never hear as well as his friends can, and that punching every person who insults him for it perhaps isn't the best idea. He grows a razor charm alongside his bloodied knuckles, and now the bread he gets with Bucky is as much stolen as it is donated by the old women who have fallen for his windswept hair and bright blue eyes. Clint always refuses to take their hauls home, because Bucky has three younger sisters and there's only so much money his pa can make selling apples on the street.

But Clint isn't Steve. He's not self-righteous and morals aren't that important to him, growing up in these hard times. He gets into fights as he grows up not because some guy was catcalling a girl on the street, but because it's Bucky's pa's birthday and he bets that wristwatch on that storefront would look mighty nice on him. He wins more fights, too, because he's only partially deaf, not asthmatic and anemic and allergic to nuts and shaped like a twig, and he can learn how to live deaf. He and Bucky learn how to talk with their hands as much as with their mouths, and soon being partially deaf isn't so much of a problem anymore.

The job that saved Sarah and her son eventually kills her. Tuberculosis is as deadly a disease as ever, and doesn't discriminate between hosts. Clint buries her on a sunny October day in 1936, where he puts on his shabby old suit and Bucky says that he's "with him 'till the end of the line, pal." Clint smiles and thanks him for the sentiment, but some of his windswept-hair-and-bright-blue-eyes charm is lost that day.

He and Bucky move in a small flat together and take jobs at the docks, where the sea spray opens their lungs and the black smoke closes them, and now Clint paints his knuckles red because that's just how you lived in those parts.

Bucky gets enlisted in 1943, and doesn't try to tell Clint that he volunteered because Clint can always figure out when he's trying to tell a lie. So Clint stews on this for a couple days, and goes on that double date at the Stark Expo that Bucky's so excited about. He has a good time, and Bonnie is a very good dancer and an even nicer girl. But he still sneaks off later that night, tries to enlist himself, and gets rejected on account of his hearing. He and Bucky fight about it then, and harder, because Clint can hold his own and Bucky isn't as worried about protecting him as he is about protecting his family without him there.

Erskine overhears the fight, but instead of finding a young man determined to serve his country, he finds a young man with blood on his knuckles and an unwavering loyalty to his best friend. He hesitates, but still offers Clint a spot in Project Rebirth, though because or despite of those qualities, he doesn't know. Clint accepts because it gives him a chance to move up in the world and get to Bucky.

Project Rebirth is hard, but not impossible. Physically, Clint is perfectly average among his peers, and makes friends with a few of them. He likes to joke that his lack of hearing makes the drill instructor almost bearable, and arm wrestles in his free time. He still takes out the bolt at the bottom of the flagpole and gets the ride with Peggy Carter, though a lewd joke or two gets him three dozen push-ups once it's over.

Just like Clint, Peggy Carter takes shit from exactly no one, and has no problems painting her knuckles red. They get along like a house on fire.

There's no romantic attraction between them, but Clint, whose dates numbered as many as Bucky's, doesn't want or need that kind of attention. He and Peggy trade insults and fighting techniques like it's breathing, and they succeed in pissing each other off as many times as they teach each other. It becomes a regular occurrence for the cadets to see Clint doing extra push-ups or getting a punch to the face, because despite their unlikely friendship Peggy is still his commanding officer, and isn't about to let him forget that.

It's Peggy (on one of those days when she likes Clint) and Erskine who convince Phillips to use the serum on Clinton Barton. Phillips lets them because he sees Clint's windswept-hair-and-bright-blue-eyes charm and bloodied knuckles and thinks, "I can work with that."

Erskine visits Clint the night before the procedure, but doesn't offer him a drink. Instead they play cards together, and debate about the values of a good man, Erskine dropping in the story of Red Skull as he goes. Clint, whose knuckles are still stained red, even if everyone else can no longer see it, has very different views on morality than the doctor. But he's persuaded on some points, enough so that by the end of the game some of his inner doubts have been fostered.

"I don't know if I'm the right choice here, Doc," he finally admits, once Erskine has thoroughly beaten him. "I don't even know why you chose me."

"I don't know, either," Erskine pipes back, so nonchalant about it that it takes Clint off guard. "Barton, there are good and bad soldiers in the world. I do think we have an abundance of them. You, sir, are not a good soldier. But," And he hums here, tapping Clint's temple as he raises his eyebrows. "You are a smart man. And, underneath all your charm and snark, a good one, too. You remember that. At the end of the day, being a good soldier doesn't matter. Other things?" He chuckles. "Other things are more valuable than a stolen trinket."

Receiving the serum is painful, but Clint makes it through with the stubborn streak that had first gotten Erskine to notice him. He emerges three inches taller and 30 pounds heavier. He's slimmer than the super soldier of another time would have been, but all the better, and he jokes with Peggy that if he'd been much heavier, he'd sink right through the floor.

Erskine still gets shot, and dies in Howard Stark's arms. Clint doesn't hesitate, and figuring where he's most needed, goes after the assassin. It's Peggy who kills him, though, as Clint gets to her a split second after her bullet catches the attacker in the head as he tries to drive away. She is almost run over by the taxi, but it's Clint who, to the surprise of both himself and his audience, pushes it out of her path and into a light pole with a superhuman shove to the side. The sample of serum stolen is broken in the crash, and no answers are found as to the attacker's identity.

Clint tries to push past Erskine's death, tries to get overseas and to the war. Phillips refuses him with the parting remark that one man isn't enough for the army.

Being enough for the army had never mattered to Clint. Getting to Bucky's side did, and Clint's grudge for being sidelined never really left his perception of Phillips. When Senator Brandt tried to recruit him to "serve his country," he refused, and the USO girls went on tour alone. For Clint, though, this whole thing was a waste of time. He was stronger now, but he couldn't put it to good use. He could finally hear, but the world was too loud. Instead he went home, to his little flat in Brooklyn, to mope.

Not for long, of course. Peggy Carter took shit from exactly no one, and that included her on-again, off-again friend going back to civilian life with what could be America's greatest asset in his blood. She drives to his dingy little apartment where the sea spray opens your lungs and the black smoke closes them and drags him out by the arm. Peggy will always be Clint's commanding officer, and she will never let him forget it.

Peggy convinces Howard Stark to take on Clint as an aid, and when Stark says he can be a janitor, Clint learns how to fly a plane out of pure spite.

And finally, Clint goes overseas. It's not how he'd like to be; he's not on the front lines (yet) like Bucky is. But he works, from flying Stark across Western Europe to doing the heavy lifting in his lab. He's not smart enough to help with the inventions, but he tests them out and finds their practical limitations. Stark loans him the vibranium shield with the bet that if he can break it, it's his. Of course, Clint takes him up on the challenge.

That shield, unpainted and still shining from construction, goes with him into enemy territory. Bucky has a habit of picking up friends willing to die for him, Clint groans, but he still gets Peggy and Howard to fly him up into Italy when his friend is captured. He grumbles all the way to the base, until the mutterings of German soldiers silence him.

Captain America doesn't exist, not yet, so when Gabe Jones asks just who he is, he simply answers with "Clint Barton." Then he lets the Allied soldiers go, with directions to "give those Germans hell." Clint isn't one for plans, nor does he think things through as much, not at this point. More men die escaping HYDRA, but the rest do escape. Meanwhile, Clint goes deeper into the base, sees Zola, and finds Bucky strapped to a table, alone.

"Did you get bigger?" Bucky asks, dazed and half-conscious.

"Did you get stupider?" Clint shoots back, half-serious and able to hear him.

Then the factory begins to blow up, blocking the exit. Clint grumbles all the way up to the second floor, where they come face-to-face with Red Skull. Red Skull recognizes Clint for the serum running in his veins, but Clint isn't exactly interested in his philosophy-filled rhetoric. Red Skull escapes with a bit more of a grudge and Clint quite a bit more annoyed.

Clint isn't much of a leader, at least not a born one, so the trek back to Allied lines is more chaotic, and it takes longer, but they get there. There's a grand celebration afterwards, and when Clint offers Peggy a dance, she turns up her nose with a smile on her face and takes Bucky's hands instead, dragging the surprised soldier into a waltz. Clint laughs.

The laughs don't last forever, of course. There is a war to win, after all. Phillips offers him the chance to form the Howling Commandos, and Clint nearly says no before Peggy steps on his toes. Fine, he grumbles, and picks up Bucky, Dernier, Jones, Dum Dum, Falsworth, and Morita.

Clint is not a born leader, and the Commandos' first missions come with as many failures as they do successes. But Peggy, ever the commanding officer, teaches him how to transform his windswept-hair-and-bright-blue-eyes charm into something men can look up to instead of feeling flattered by, and soon things begin to turn around. It's not soon enough for Gabe Jones, though, who dies during a particularly nasty mission, when Clint's order to retreat comes a little too slow and a little too reluctantly.

It takes the team a little while to come back from that one. There is broken trust, broken hearts, and the Commandos are almost disbanded before Peggy convinces Clint to step up and get better. So Clint pulls himself and the team back together, and grows a little taller with it. The men are more cynical, more cautious here, but they grow, and they do it together. Clint recruits one of the American soldiers they rescue a few weeks later, a reconnaissance scout named Daniel Sousa who he thinks could balance them out more.

No one mentions it to their superiors, but in private the Commandos treat Peggy as one of their own.

Clint's knuckles are still bloody, but this time, with war, the red seeps deeper into his skin. The scars don't stay, not anymore, but the scent of blood does, lingering on his skin and uniform. He learns to live with it, like he did with his lack of hearing back during a childhood that was rapidly growing further and further away.

Slowly, Captain America comes to be. It starts with some British troops, who see an American outshining them all and deciding a nickname is due. It spreads quickly after that, from foreign troops to American ones to the media, but it isn't until mid-1944 that Howard steals the shield back for a night and returns it with an American-themed paint job.

"What the hell," is Clint's reaction. Howard grins.

"Until I see a chip off this shield, it's still mine, _Captain America_ ," he teases, thrusting it back in his face. Dum Dum guffaws in the background. "And I will do with my property as I wish."

"Keep it, then. I bet you I could win this war with a bow and arrow."

"Mad Jack Churchill's already doing that!" Bucky shouts out, barely holding himself together. "Keep it unique, Cap!"

"I mean, I could make a uniform to go with it," Howard continued, thoughtful. "It'd have to be red, white, 'n blue, of course. Maybe a big star on the chest?"

"Gimme that." Clint huffed, snatching the shield in defeat as the rest of the team finally broke. He'd never liked the colors on his flag. They'd been a sign of cleanliness, of wealth, when he'd been a child. Now, in the war, it's like putting a target on your back.

The fight goes on. The Howling Commandos move in with the front lines, from Italy to Normandy and a brief stint in Belgium before they are called to catch Arnim Zola in the Swiss Alps.

Bucky falls off the train. Clint sits in a bombed-out shelter and struggles in an arm wrestling match against Peggy. Later he sits with Daniel and tells the man to get his act together and ask Peggy out to dance. Life is short, after all. They might as well make it count.

Clint's windswept-hair-and-bright-blue-eyes charm is gone, now. He doesn't replace Bucky's spot on the team. The others don't point it out. The war's almost over, anyways.

There's one more mission, though. Always one more mission. HYDRA is planning a strike on U.S. soil, and it's up to the Commandos and the 107th to stop them by striking their base first. Clint thinks about giving himself up as a distraction, but when Peggy protests such a suicidal move, he listens. She's smarter and better than him at this, anyways.

Their distraction ends up being a small platoon of men attacking on the opposite side of the base. Clint and the Commandos spearhead the main attack, fighting together as a rage-filled unit with nothing left to lose but each other. Bucky and Gabe hang in their thoughts, fuel their steps, and together they make it through the first lines and into the base.

They catch tantalizing glimpses of Red Skull throughout the fight, and it isn't until only Falsworth and Bucky remain together that they realize they've been lured apart.

"Oh, well," Clint grunts, his eyes hard and empty, as he swings his shield and takes out a man with a rather dangerous flamethrower. Falsworth looks at him worriedly, but Clint ignores it, and there isn't time for them to speak, because they enter into a hangar and the Red Skull is _there_. He's halfway into a plane that Clint knows is loaded with bombs without seeing them.

Falsworth, bless the man, sees a discarded car in the back of the hangar, and they're off after the plane. Clint knows he's the only one who can catch Red Skull and avenge Bucky, so they exchange terse but fond "good luck"s, and Clint leaps up, grabs the end of the landing gear and sneaks inside.

The fight against Red Skull is hard, but Clint has always had an archer's eye, and every throw of his shield flies true. He's even less agreeable to Nazi philosophy than he was in the base in Italy, and the Red Skull's rhetoric only angers him more. Here he throws the shield a little differently, a little more accurately, and Red Skull falls. Clint does not hesitate in killing him with his own hands, staining his knuckles red.

He doesn't know what the glowing blue cube is, but if HYDRA has it then it isn't safe. He lowers the plane's gangplank and kicks it into the ocean below.

Clint knows how to fly a plane, and he knows that a lot of people will die if he doesn't put it down in the Arctic. He talks with Peggy, still, but this time Howard is there with her, holding her hand as they struggle to hold back tears together.

"Daniel hasn't asked you to dance yet, has he?" Clints asks, keeping his eye on the radio and not on the startlingly still wall of ice approaching. "Little man doesn't have the courage. He fancies you, Peg, but you gotta stop scaring him so much."

Peggy half-laughs, half-cries, and goes along with it. "Fine. Next week, Stork Club. I'll drag him there if I have to."

"Good. Heaven knows I've been trying to set you two up for ages. You do it by Saturday and Jacques will owe Jim five bucks." He pauses for a beat, then speaks again. He can only see ice. "Sorry I can't return the shield, Howard."

He doesn't hear their replies as the cabin erupts into ice.

He doesn't hear Howard say the shield is his.

For the next 66 years, Clinton Francis Barton, Captain America, is encased in ice, blood frozen on his knuckles.


	2. One Eye Open

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is rather short, since it's about Steve's life pre-Avengers. The next chapter (Avengers-onward), will be much longer to make up for it. Hope you like it and please let me know what you think!

Steven Grant Rogers is born on July 4, 1982, to Edith and Harold Rogers, with one eye open.

His mother will tell him about it when he’s young, when his asthma is acting up and during the time he has scarlet fever, and how it means he is such a smart boy. His older brother, Barney, says it means he’s been on guard since he was a baby, which is good for him since they have to watch out for their father when he drinks too much.

Steve learns when he is young to sleep with one eye open. Dad always comes home when he has a good drink after bedtime, and one too many nights he’s been pulled out of sleep by Barney or he getting hit. By the time he’s five, the slightest creak of the floorboards has him creaking one eye open.

Steve grows up sick, but his mother makes sure the very basics of his health are covered, if nothing else, and it is much more than 1920s New York had to offer a single working mother. Cigarettes are replaced with inhalers for his asthma, and his scarlet fever will never progress to rheumatic fever, thanks to antibiotics. But such treatments cost money, and the money begins to dry up as Harold grows more and more jealous of the son who is spending perfectly good drinking money on  _ inhalers _ . 

But it is enough. Steve is a sickly child, and a weak one, but he grows up much stronger than he would have been, in a different life.

The scars on his soul, though, are a different story.

Steve does not grow up in a loving home. Edith does love him, but her love, or perhaps her subservience, for her husband is greater. Harold? Well, once upon a time he was the man Edith fell in love with, but by the time Steve is born he cares more for himself and whether or not he has a drink in his hand.

Barney watches over him, especially when he’s little, but as soon as he can walk his big brother is curling his hands into fists and teaching him how to punch. Barney never had his childhood innocence, and he’s only a few years older than Steve, so teaching him how to swear and pick his battles and differentiate vodka and whiskey is the only way he knows how to protect him. Barney and Steve fight often, but these fights have a purpose. Steve is small, Steve is weak, Steve can’t breathe right. Barney doesn’t hold back from telling him any of that; believing otherwise would make him vulnerable to Dad, vulnerable to the playground bullies, unable to pull his own weight. So Barney teaches him like his father taught him, with punches and kicks, but lighter, softer, so Steve can learn how to dodge and fight back.

If there’s one thing Steve can never learn though, it’s when to pick his battles. He sees his mother, sees Barney, sees  _ himself _ getting hurt and yelled at over and over and over, and it makes him angry. Steve doesn’t have any friends, and the only person he trusts, Barney, isn’t exactly the best role model. So Steve takes that anger and uses it to fight, to snap back against teachers, to distrust any figure of authority in his life.

Steve fights the strict teachers at school, fights the bullies by the oat fields, and fights his father when he gets home. Sometimes, when his asthma is acting up, or the injuries are bad enough, Edith or Barney will wet a cloth, get a bandaid, and scold him for standing back up when he should just stay down.

There is no universe where Steve Rogers stays down. 

So he grows slowly, more slowly than Barney who’s gaining an inch a month, gets bruises and scars, and sleeps with one eye open.

When he’s eight, Harold drives drunk and gets himself and Edith killed.

Barney doesn’t cry at the funeral. Steve does. He’s the weaker brother, after all.

They go into foster care, after that. Barney hates it, and because Barney hates it Steve does too. Sometimes the families and couples they’re saddled with are kind to them, sometimes they aren’t. It doesn’t make a difference for the Rogers brothers. Steve always keeps one eye open, fights the teachers and the bullies and whoever he deems “bad,” and gets bandaged up by Barney, who’s a little more annoyed each time.

Steve is old enough, now, to know that his life is not normal, that the way Barney and his Dad raised him was not “right.” His anger grows, and now some of it is directed at his older brother. They fight, but just like their childhood duels, not hard. Their relationship has always been about survival, and to survive they need each other, even if they don’t like it all that much.

They run away from the families a few times, but they’re always caught and soon enough Steve sees that it’s pointless, pointless to run in towns like Waverly, Iowa, where there is only farmland in all directions for miles and miles.

The Rogers brothers grow up. Steve gets glasses, because his eyesight is poor and his current foster parents are nice enough to afford them, keeps his inhaler on him, and fights his way through life. Barney gets taller, fixes his baby brother’s messes, watches his six, and keeps his head down all along the way.

Barney turns eighteen, and because he didn’t graduate high school and can see no other way out, enlists in the army and skips town. Steve, fifteen, fights the bullies and the teachers and the bad guys and has no one to turn to. He would have flunked out of high school like his brother if he didn’t meet Laura Tanner.

Steve is moved to a family in Iowa Falls at sixteen, goes to school and meets her in art class. Laura sees his talent for what it is, sees how he looks at the world, and decides he’ll be her next project. Soon enough she has him staying in the library after school, buying watercolors and canvases, and they draw together, painting and sketching and drawing whatever they want.

For the first time in his life, Steve has a friend. 

And art is a good outlet for him. With Laura at his side, Steve calms down, if only a little bit, and he stops antagonizing those around him. His grades go up, because he’s smart and can do the work if he isn’t so focused on fighting his way through life. He and Laura see movies and eat ice cream and soon enough Steve finds that he feels halfway normal. He sells his art on the side, works at McDonald’s, and gets enough money to afford community college. 

Steve still fights, because Steve never learns how to stay down, but now it’s only when he gets provoked. Laura fixes up his bruises and split lips and talks about how he ought to teach her how to fight like he does, all elbows and knees and teeth because he can't punch with enough force for it to hurt.

This is a relationship that isn’t about survival or anger, and Steve, touch-starved and emotionally stunted, grasps onto it with hands and feet. They go to college together. Their hang-outs escalate to dates, then deescalate back down to hang-outs, but they stick together.

Steve turns twenty-one, gets an associate’s degree in art, and settles down in a shared studio with Laura, who’s working in her family’s restaurant. He still sleeps with one eye open; Laura snores, loud enough to be heard from the other room.

He still fights, because violence has bled into his bones. He buys knives and learns how to use them, through the same trial-and-error that he used when Barney taught him how to fight. The petty thieves in the small town talk and soon everyone’s heard of the mysterious young man whose knives come out just in time to stop a robbery or a mugging.

And, well, if the police figure out who he is, they don’t say anything publicly, because at least little old Steve Rogers is doing some good, now. But one of the officers tells the story of the vigilante kid to his cousin, who tells her co-worker.

Phil Coulson drives into town the next week and walks right up to Steve and Laura’s doorstep. He knocks, Steve answers, and Phil, never one to judge one by their appearance, offers him a job.

So Steve says goodbye to Laura with promises to write and visit, and ships out to Virginia.

It’s the first time he’s left the midwest. It’s overwhelming, and SHIELD training is hard, but Steve makes it through, stronger than he ever could have hoped to be thanks to modern medicine and a surgery to fix the hole in his heart. Coulson visits every once in a while, watching the boy he’d taken a chance on grow.

Steve Rogers is an emotionally stunted, violent man. But he is also clever, imaginative, and most surprisingly of all, a good leader. Coulson is perceptive, and once Steve graduates training, he takes him on as his personal assistant and agent.

Peggy Carter-Sousa meets this young, stick-shaped young man who’s just beginning to fill out, on a few occasions just before she retires. Steve makes quite the impression on her, and she remarks to Coulson that he ought to enter the recruiting division full-time. Steve notices a photograph of Captain America on her desk, and wonders.

He looks into that photograph further, and eventually Clint Barton becomes more than a textbook character for Steve, who even now still has a bit of a bone to pick with authority. He sees a poor orphan like himself rising up against the Nazis and the bullies and thinks that he would’ve liked to meet this man who’d died so long ago. 

Stumbling across Coulson’s trading card collection is a little weird, though.

The years pass. Steve organizes paperwork, defeats targets with clever tactics as much as with bony elbows and sharp knives, and keeps one eye open at all times. His reputation grows, and he sends a few letters to Barney, bragging about how far he’s come (Barney leaves the army after a decade of service, and goes to work in a mechanic shop in Boston. They meet face to face once, in 2004. Without the shadow of their father over them, things are stilted and awkward. They keep it to sporadic emails and the even rarer call after that), and constant correspondence and visits with Laura. 

Agents Rogers and Carter are assigned to assassinate the Black Widow. They bring her back as an asset instead.

After Coulson gives them a good scolding and the Widow is screened, tested, and released into service, Agents Steve Rogers, Sharon Carter, and Natasha Romanoff become a regular sight at base. It’s rare for one to be seen without the others, and they complement each other neatly in the field. Steve has the plan, Natasha the speed, and Sharon the power, and together they rise from reputable to near legendary.

In 2008, noting how the world is changing and his elbows, teeth and knives might not be enough, Steve takes up the sniper rifle, too. Natasha sees this as a challenge, and develops her Widow’s Bite. Sharon complements their competitiveness with cool, balming humor, and they continue to grow.

Steve’s assigned to New Mexico in 2011 for one of his increasingly rare solo missions, to guard the hammer that no one can lift. More as a joke than anything, Steve gives it a try. The hammer doesn’t budge.

Steve Rogers is still a good man, but his soul is scarred by his childhood. He is not worthy. Not yet.

Thor breaks into the makeshift compound, and Steve nearly shoots his head off before Coulson instructs him to stand down. So he watches instead as the stripped god tries and fails to lift the hammer and is arrested. He spends the next few days on a pleasant vacation, or as close as he can get, keeping one eye open and on the prisoner.

The Destroyer attacks Puente Antiguo cuts those few days short. Steve helps evacuate the town and even tries (and fails) to attack the thing himself. He gets a broken arm for his efforts, but gets to see Thor regain his powers and defeat the Destroyer. 

Thor comes up to him once it is all over, once he has seen his friends, alien and Earthling. Steve sees the man in Asgardian armor tower over him and wonders just what his life has come to, standing there and cradling his broken arm with his good one.

“I saw your efforts to fight alongside us despite your size,” Thor says, clapping Steve on the shoulder hard enough that he almost buckles. He bites his tongue against the size remark, but only because SHIELD has taught him to take revenge in subtler ways. “It is reassuring that Earth will be in the hands of good men like you. When I return, I wish to have a drink with you. I’m sure we can swap many tales!” 

“I’ll hold you up on that,” Steve finds it in himself to snark back through the pain. “You owe me; I broke my arm for you.” 

Thor guffaws, knowing full well that Steve had gotten his arm broken to protect those caught in the crossfire, not him. He leaves with a swirling red cape and a bath of rainbow light, and the Earthlings are alone once more. 

Someone, most likely Coulson, watches the encounter unfold. The teasing from Nat and Sharon lasts as long as the cast. 

A few months go by. Steve spends his birthday and the Fourth of July home in Iowa Falls, watching the fireworks with Sharon as Laura introduces Natasha to hot dogs. He lays down in the cool grass of a baseball field, watching the lights shower above them. Barney’s birthday letter is folded in his pocket, a harkening back to days long past.

Night is swiftly falling, and Sharon plops down next to him, close enough that her hair brushes against his cheek, but says nothing, merely sighing in contentment. In the background, Steve can hear Natasha demanding another hot dog, because “I’ve been American for years now, how dare my teammates and SHIELD keep me in the dark about something like this _. _ ”

Steve looks up at the starry, light-filled sky, and thinks of a different birthday, a birthday spent cowering in fear against his older brother as his father screamed and yelled and hit their mother. He thinks of another, abandoned and alone and nursing a black eye in teenage angst. He thinks of a birthday spent training for SHIELD, where he felt like his muscles would give out and his lungs would burst. 

Things have changed, though.  _ He’s  _ changed.

Steven Grant Rogers lets out a long breath of air, and closes both his eyes.


End file.
